


Costumes

by 3wisellamas



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: (Well Ernesto's a teen but whatever), Baby bots!, Fake Blood, Fake Gore, Fake Zombies, Family Fluff, Gen, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Real chainsaws, Sibling Bonding, Tiny children watching astonishingly age-inappropriate scary movies, Trick or Treating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 10:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21135407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3wisellamas/pseuds/3wisellamas
Summary: Darrell can't handle anything scary, and especially not scary movies, which is a big problem on Halloween.  Luckily, Shannon helps him find something about the holiday he can appreciate!





	Costumes

Lord Boxman just couldn't help himself. The blinds hung across his office windows were too thin a barrier to block out the sounds from across the street, and it was too simple to pull them apart for yet another hate-peek.

"Ugh, do they have to do this  _ every year? _ " Little costumed hero brats scurried between every single store at that accursed plaza for candy, and every year, without fail, a few got the wrong idea about where exactly the annual Plaza Trick-or-Treat Event ended, and wandered across the street to Boxmore.

And sure enough, there they were, a small group waiting at the crosswalk. Boxman turned to his teenage son, obediently standing next to his desk as always. "Ernesto?" 

"On it, Dad!" The purple robot gave a quick salute and dashed out of the office. With a sigh, his father eventually followed, reaching the main door of the factory just as a few loud knocks echoed across the factory floor.

Pausing just a few more seconds to prepare himself, he slowly opened the door, glaring down into the kids' sweet, smiling faces.

"Trick or treat!"

"Ugh, here we go..." Boxman pinched the bridge of his nose, growling. He scanned this year's disappointments -- two princesses, one cat, one hockey player, at least three copies of that ridiculous new POINT hero Chip Damage, one cheap demon "costume" consisting of nothing more than a pair of red footie pajamas and a paper plate mask, and one oddly realistic-looking preteen witch with purple hair.

And they all held their bags up to him.

"Are you gonna give us candy or what, Mister?"

A malicious grin spread across the cyborg's face -- at the very least, there was one part he truly loved about these intrusions.

"Trick."

Right on cue, Ernesto suddenly jumped out from behind a nearby parked car, hefting a large open barrel of toxic waste over his shoulder. He threw its contents over the shocked children, though they all managed to dodge, letting the corrosive liquid splash onto, and start to slightly dissolve, the concrete in front of the door.

The kids didn't even hesitate as they ran back across the parking lot, screaming...and at the back, from behind the factory's sign, another Ernesto jumped out, this time just content to hold up his claws menacingly and chase them the rest of the way to the crosswalk. The light was already green and waiting for them to return to Lakewood Plaza Turbo.

As both Ernestos returned with that empty barrel Boxman just laughed, his sour mood finally lifted at the display. Truly, scaring those entitled brats away from his home was the one good part of every Halloween.

"Whoa..." Shooing off his Lesser copy, the Primary Ernesto scooped up three of the kids' bags, left behind in their terror. "The little ones are gonna love this year's haul!"

"Good, let's go give it to them already." Boxman frowned again, his brief joy fading. Now that the one good part was already over, it was time to get back to dealing with all the parts of the holiday he  _ hated. _

Especially the most recent of those: Darrell.

High-pitched screaming greeted them as they approached the playroom, both from a scary movie playing on the TV, and from a tiny robot, hiding underneath a large blanket in the corner and rocking himself back and forth in panic.

Boxman turned to Shannon, mere inches from the screen, with her baby brother Jethro intently watching with her on her lap. "Darrell's still not coming out from under the blanket?"

"Nope." The little girl shrugged. "I tried, but he's still too much of a scaredy-cat to come out."

He looked towards the screen again, trying to determine which movie was playing, since it seemed so familiar...

Suddenly, as a masked, disheveled villain appeared onscreen, he recognized it, confirming with a glance at the empty cardboard sleeve sitting by his old VCR.

"Shannon, Factory of Fear is the movie that got us into this mess in the first place!" He slammed the pause button. "Ever since we watched it together last year Darrell hasn't been able to handle anything 'scary' at all, and he's been whining about Halloween since August!"

"I know! That's why I wanted to watch it with him again, so he could see how fake all the effects are, and he won't be scared of them anymore!" Passing Jethro to her father, Shannon pressed the play button, letting the movie continue into a rather grisly chainsaw scene.

She finally ripped the blanket off, forcing her twin brother's head to turn towards the TV. "See, Darrell, that's not even real blood! It's all just grape jelly!"

The little robot's eye widened, and all the artificial pigment drained from his face as he watched the movie's villain slash their victim over and over, the chainsaw revving and splattering more and more of that grape jelly blood, until he just couldn't take it anymore, wailing and plunging his face into Shannon's chest. Defeated, she patted his back, letting his sobs start anew.

Boxman just sighed. "Look. I'm going back to my office to watch those horrible children across the street some more, and hate every single minute of it. Ernesto is going to join me, and get ready to once again scare the goody two shoes off the next batch that comes to our door. Jethro is going to continue being completely oblivious, I'm sure. And you, Shannon, my darling, wonderful little baby girl..." He smiled, lovingly stroking the top of her head.

"You are going to  _ SHUT HIM UP. _ " He pointed to Darrell, who had retreated back underneath his precious blanket, still crying loudly.

As he laid Jethro onto the couch and stomped out of the room, Ernesto passed the bags of candy down to his sister. 

"Happy Halloween, kids." He left as well, and Shannon giddily snatched a few treats and returned to her movie viewing, though she paused it again only a few seconds later.

"Darrell, I can't hear it over you crying!"

The little robot slowly calmed down as the sounds of that chainsaw and its screaming victims stopped, and he pulled the blanket up slightly to peek out at Shannon.

"Is...Is it over?"

"No! It's just about to do the scene where the guy hacks the safety inspector's arms and legs off!" She mimed waving a chainsaw around in the air, swinging it towards Darrell's shoulder.

"AAH!" He pulled his blanket down again, whimpering.

Shannon groaned. "You're such a big crybaby..." Eventually she sat next to him, hugging him through the blanket.

"Hey, why don't we go do something else," she suggested, finally bringing Darrell back from his newest bout of crying. "We can go eat our candy and watch Daddy and Ernesto scare those hero kids."

He jumped at the word 'scare.' "No!"

"I-I mean..." Shannon thought for a second. "...We can, uh, see those stupid heroes' costumes! And laugh at how dumb they all look!" She smiled, despite her brother clearly not being able to see it. "Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Darrell sniffled, and pulled his head out from under the blanket again. "I...guess so..."

"I'll let you know when it's scary, so you don't have to look!" She pulled Darrell to his feet, letting him keep the blanket around his shoulders. "And Jethro...be good, okay?" She laid the smallest of the three bags of candy beside him on the couch and resumed the movie, while Darrell ran from the room.

"I am Jethwo," the little toddler thanked her, his eyes sparkling in delight as the chainsawing started again.

  
  


\---

  
  


For reasons none of the robot children understood, or rather, that they all perfectly understood but didn't want to admit, Shannon was the only one of them who got to have a window in her lovingly-decorated bedroom, a stark contrast to the other robots' plain, windowless rooms. And thankfully, it happened to overlook the plaza, perfect for Halloween costume viewing. As they entered the room Shannon pushed a small table under the windowsill, and she and Darrell climbed on top.

"I still can't see..." Right away, Shannon shapeshifted into a pair of binoculars, with Darrell looking through one side and one of her own eyes taking up the other.

"Is that...a mermaid?" He squinted, watching one child lead an older, un-costumed hero down the sidewalk towards the frame store. "With legs?"

"Why would you go trick-or-treating dressed as something that can't even walk?!" Shannon's eye darted between that mermaid and what looked like it was supposed to be a robot, made up of a bunch of cardboard boxes simply spray-painted silver.

"Oh, that one's just gross." As Darrell tried to see where she was looking she wrenched herself back in the other direction. "Trust me, you don't wanna see it."

"Okay." He smiled, seeing a tiny child dressed in chaps and a ten-gallon hat that was three sizes too big, as he approached the fitness dojo and the tiger stripe-clad woman passing out candy at its door. "I really like the cowboy!"

"Of course you do." Shannon was already starting to get bored -- none of those heroes' costumes were even scary, just...embarrassing. Perfect for Darrell, though, she supposed.

"Ooh, look down, look down!" she cried. "There's some coming to Boxmore!"

"Oh no!" Darrell dropped the binoculars, to Shannon's displeasure, and she took the opportunity to revert to her original form. 

"I wonder how much candy they're gonna drop when Ernesto scares 'em..." Shannon extended her neck slightly to better see the door below her window, but next to her, Darrell ducked and pulled the blanket around him tighter. 

"No, no! No scaring!"

As Shannon watched, and Darrell hid, the kids knocked on the factory's main door, shoving their bags into Lord Boxman's face with a smile and a "Trick or treat!"

"Trick!"

This time, a small army of Ernestos emerged from behind the strategically-placed cars in the Boxmore lot, lazily stumbling and holding their long arms forward, and groaning in faux-agony. Every single one showed obvious structural damage, from missing limbs and heads to frayed, sparking wires and leaking rubber hoses trailing from deep gouges cut into their mangled bodies. Every single one of them that still possessed a head had less of a face than usual, their CPUs exposed and their eyes blanked out or showing error messages. As they slowly ambled towards the kids they intentionally glitched their movements and their voices, their ghastly moaning occasionally interrupted by one or more of the robo-zombie horde begging to eat their brains.

"Wow, that's so cool!" Shannon excitedly glanced down at Darrell. "You're missing it, the heroes are all running away!"

He didn't respond, pulling in his knees and rocking himself back and forth as he kept his eye shut tight.

"I don't wanna see it, it's too scary!" His body shook, and he began to cry yet again.

Shannon huffed, lightly kicking him. "Darrell, you big dummy, none of this is real! It's just Ernesto, and he's not even that scary."

"Brains, I want your brains!" Ernesto shouted over the children's screaming, as the horde broke into a slightly faster walk, herding them towards the crosswalk. Darrell protectively covered his braincase with his hands.

"I know it's not real!" Tears streamed down the center of his face. "But...But that doesn't make it not scary!"

"Darrell..."

"I don't wanna be scared, Shannon!" He held his arms out to his sister, who sat back down with him and pulled him into a gentle hug. "I hate Halloween! I hate all of it!" She repositioned the blanket to wipe his face a little, as he started crying more forcefully, and she realized it wasn't just tears spilling onto her shoulder.

Behind him, Shannon spotted the bags from earlier. "You don't hate Halloween candy, though, right?"

"No..." Darrell sniffled, still hiccuping into the blanket. "That...That part's o-okay, I guess."

"And the costumes!" She smiled. "You liked seeing the costumes, didn't you? Which one was your favorite?"

"Um..." He began to calm down, though Shannon still held him tight. "I liked the cowboy."

Below them, the Ernestos lumbered back to the factory, with the Primary one picking up a fallen candy bag and delivering it to his father.

"Good work Ernesto, hopefully those are the last of them tonight." He greedily eyed a few chocolate bars in the bag. "Now, go get new bodies, all of you. You look terrible." He pulled out a remote control from his pocket and activated it, and instantly all of the damaged Ernestos rebooted, leaving the parking lot covered in scrap metal.

Shannon grabbed their candy bags, letting Darrell take one as she came up with a new plan. "Maybe we could make costumes ourselves? It doesn't have to be anything scary at all!"

"We can make our own?" Cautiously, he peeked out the window again, though unfortunately his favorite costume was long gone. "Can I be a cowboy?"

"Maybe!" She tugged at his blanket, as it dropped from his shoulders. "Come on, I think I know where to start."

She led him just a few doors down the hall, to Lord Boxman's room -- the robots weren't normally allowed inside, but with their father distracted they figured it wouldn't be too serious an offense.

"I know Daddy's gotta have something we can try!" Shannon opened up his closet, while Darrell tried the dresser, opening the drawers to rifle through their contents.

"Hey, I've never seen Daddy wear this..." He yanked out a small, light blue shirt from the bottom of a drawer, letting the folded clothes on top of it come spilling out as well, and held up his prize. "It's my size, too!"

"Well, try it on!" Too distracted by her own costume hunt, Shannon didn't look over at him, instead slamming the closet shut and turning instead to Boxman's bed, an idea running through her processor.

Darrell slipped the blue sailor shirt over his head, smiling as it fit. "I think there's more..." He reached back into the drawer, pulling out a pair of darker blue shorts and a tiny sailor hat, which complimented it perfectly.

"What do you think, Shannon? I look just like a-!" He gasped, as he realized his twin was no longer in the room with him, replaced by... 

"A ghost!!"

"No, Darrell,  _ I'm _ the ghost!" Shannon realized her brother was about to cry again, and quickly lifted the bedsheet over her head to reveal herself. "And it's just me anyway, okay! It's just my costume!"

"I thought you said costumes aren't scary!" He teared up again. 

"...Ghosts aren't scary, though."

"Yeah they are!"

"Well..." She replaced the sheet, making sure the holes she'd cut into it were in the right position over her eyes. "Ghost  _ costumes _ aren't scary, especially since it's just me under here, and not a real ghost."

"I guess so..."

"And besides!" She covertly sighed in relief, as Darrell finally seemed to become comfortable with the costume. "You remember that really old videos game Daddy showed us, with the ghosts chasing that big yellow guy around as he tried to eat all the dots? Those were ghosts, but they weren't scary at all, just normal villains like us!"

She laughed. "You can just pretend I'm dressed as one of those ghosts, okay? Not one of the scary ones!"

"Okay…"

"I told you, Halloween doesn't have to be all scary." She tried her best to wrap her arms around her brother, though it was quite difficult for her with the sheet in the way, and he met her in the middle, squeezing her tight. "There's stuff even a scaredy-cat like you can like about it too."

He smiled. "Like costumes!"

"Exactly!"

Boxman's faint voice reached them from the hallway just outside, through the still-open door as he approached. "Those rotten, no-good kids..."

"He isn't talking about us, is he?"

Shannon poked his shoulder. "Of course not Glass-Brain, he's talking about-"

"YOU!" Boxman pointed at the intruders, his jaw dropping. "What are you...How...Who?!"

He examined the children underneath their costumes more closely. "Wait. Darrell? And...Shannon, is that you?"

"Uh..." Darrell tried desperately to concoct a satisfactory explanation, but came up empty. Instead, he simply held up his bag of candy. "Trick or treat!"

Shannon rolled her eyes. "You idiot..." She stepped in front of her brother, hoping to shield him from their dad's potential wrath. "Darrell and I decided to make costumes, so he wouldn't be as scared of Halloween anymore!"

"Wait a second, where did you even get those-" Boxman's gaze shifted around the room, and the dresser drawers and old clothes strewn across the floor, finally settling on the bed, with all its covers torn and scattered and a sheet missing. "...Those are my things, aren't they."

He wanted to scream, and on reflex his hand shot into his pocket looking for the remote to reboot them then and there, but looking down again at his children, something in him short-circuited, and he could only smack his forehead in disgust. After a few seconds he dug into his own candy, picking out the first two chocolate bars his claw managed to find, and with great hesitation, a little nausea, and some very well-hidden pride, he dropped one into each of his children's bags.

"Now take those things off, and get yourselves to bed. You've got a plaza to destroy tomorrow morning..."

  
  


\---

  
  


"Trick!"

At Boxman's cue, a loud chainsaw roared throughout the Boxmore parking lot, and a masked Shannon jumped out from behind a nearby car, waving the weapon towards the screaming kids. They turned and ran, but as soon as they did so Ernesto appeared from behind another car, wielding the same mask and saw.

"Who's ready to lose all their arms and legs?!"

The children broke every pedestrian traffic law to return to the safety of the plaza, leaving every single bag of candy behind.

"Alright!" Shannon pounced on this year's hard-earned loot, already digging into one of the bags as Ernesto scrambled to grab the others. 

"Now, now, remember we have to share." The two returned to the factory door, where their father was still completely in stitches at those wretched heroes' faces.

But, his joy couldn't last forever. The one part of the holiday he loved was over, and it was now time to deal with the parts he hated. 

Namely, Darrell.

The instant he turned back into the factory, two little red hands shoved a cheap plastic crown and a thick piece of faux-fur-lined purple velvet at him.

"Darrell..." Shannon and Ernesto quickly ditched their masks and chainsaws, smiling innocently, as Boxman examined the items his son had handed him. "What exactly is this?"

"It's your costume, Daddy!" Darrell giggled, adjusting his cowboy hat and crude, handmade leather vest. "You're a king instead of a lord tonight!"

Sighing, he plopped the crown onto his head, and tied the purple cape around his neck. Impressively, it fit rather well -- who knew Darrell of all robots could actually learn to sew?

"And you two!" Giving a disappointed frown remarkably like his father's, Darrell scanned their tattered, grape jelly-stained factory jumpsuits. "I'm glad you're not scary anymore, but you still need  _ good _ costumes! So, here." He pulled out two clean suits and hard hats, roughly in their sizes.

While the siblings took a moment to change, Boxman sighed. "You know, this...isn't really necessary, Darrell." 

"Of course it is!" The little robot laughed again, grabbing his share of candy. "Halloween is the best holiday, and costumes are the best thing about it!"

He started towards the playroom, pulling his dad's arms behind him. "Now come on! I started carving a kitty jack-o-lantern, and put in that movie where the guy and his dog visit the nice, not-scary-at-all monster school!"

Shannon scoffed. "No Factory of Fear, though?" She jabbed Ernesto's side, her volume lowering to a whisper. "I left the tape with Jethro, for when Darrell goes to bed." 

'King' Boxman interrupted, breaking out of Darrell's grip and passing back their movie villain masks. "Let me know when you start. I already hated Halloween, but any more of this year's squeaky-clean Darrell-friendly version and I'm going to puke."

  
  
  



End file.
